Saturday, August 6, 2011

Chapter 59: In Which I Get Autobiographical

Reason #250 why I love Prince: he has respect for his catalog. I don't mean this in the sense that he spends half his time pulling his songs off Youtube. I'm talking live performance. The last time I saw him in concert was damn near ten years ago on the Musicology tour. All the songs were awesome, but there were three he absolutely killed, stretching them way beyond their album lengths with improv and additional bits. They were "The Question of You," "Sometimes it Snows in April" and "Take Me With U." In order, a three-minute track off his most reviled album, a non-single off the soundtrack to one of his movies, and the lowest-placing single off Purple Rain. He KILLED these songs. Did 'em to death. It's very cool that, after so much time, he sees the worth in his more obscure work.

Another artist that thinks this way is Korn, who I also love. While they don't have the energy as a live act that they once did, being in their 40s and all, they make up for it by not going up there and playing a bunch of singles, but revisiting and re-imagining their obscure work. They retire songs from their setlists and bring others back. Green Day is one of the greatest live acts I've ever seen, but I wish their shows weren't so single-tastic.

I've been publishing writing since 2005. My goal is to still be reading early work like "Prodigal Child" or "Sacred Duty" at events when I'm 40. Hell, I may dust them off sooner than that.

Leaving Washington DC

The lowest point in my life in recent memory was the autumn and winter of 2008. I had just returned to Washington DC from a productive summer in Pittsburgh working for the Carnegie Library. It was also a socially great time for me, as I got to hang with my family in Pittsburgh. I've never been close with my blood relatives, extended or nuclear, but there are people I consider my family by more than blood. Ties of love and trust. Many of them live in my hometown. So I returned to three realities.

1) I had no money to finish grad school at the University of Maryland.

2) I could not find gainful employment.

3) I was a politically active person in the most oppressive city in the country.

Dropping out of College Park was one of the first things. I was enrolled in Maud Casey's workshop and was really excited to take it. The girl who was my counselor was pretty much useless. We had several conversations about financial aid in which she acted annoyed I was even there and told me every time there was nothing out there for me. At all. But I had a talk with Maud that really put things in perspective for me. Grad school was not the end-all, be-all. I could always return to College Park if I had the funds later on. So I left Maryland, a school I had grown to love with a community where I felt welcome.

My B.A. in English got me no work, even after I'd already taught middle school for a year and a half. I took a job as an ESL teacher. I sucked at it. My one student told me straight up that her English was getting worse. There was some other part-timey thing I did, none of which earned me a dime.

I am a person whose politics are left of center. Prior to moving back to DC I peacefully protested the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities. I returned to a city where being an activist feels like banging your head on a wall, for obvious reasons. I also returned to a city where I had few allies. The local "radical" scene had a lot I objected to. It was predominantly white and suburban, and a lot of people seemed more dedicated to making spaces where they could feel comfortable and unchallenged than in working toward any kind of social change, or even in getting to know their neighbors. There was a ton of white privilege being exercised and the whole scene was alienating, the kind of experience that makes people join APOC (a group which, by the way, I hate). Just an overall clique-y, high school atmosphere. It wasn't everybody. There are lots of DC folks involved in organized resistance who I have love for. The ones who weren't about shit know who they are. After coming from a city of blue-collar anarchists working to reclaim space and build their alternative, hanging out with a bunch of Capture the Flag-playing scene punks, well, sucked. I was lonely, miserable, broke and drunk, and the few cool things that happened during this time (such as really developing my reading style, and meetng WENDY PINI) meant little to me at the time.

Which brings me too...the Coldsnap Legal benefit.

I'm writing about it because I was just thinking about it today. As someone who wasn't arrested at the RNC, I thought it paramount to do something for those who were. That same year I had visited Barcelona and was wowed by the meals served at the local squats. Once a week or so, squats would cook up a giant meal. You could just show up, drop a few Euros and enjoy the company of intelligent people from around the world. This way, certain squats were able to stay afloat and self-sufficient for DECADES. It occurred to me that if you do an event where there is food, real food, people will show up and they will pay money.

So I decided to plan a multi-course fancy dress dinner as a benefit for the legal collective in the Twin Cities. My favorite part of planning was the company. I got to work with friends old and new. One was an high school friend of mine who had just moved back to the city and his girlfriend. Another was a fellow I had met in DC, an absolutely lovely guy named Mike who is one of my favorite people. Another was this young student at Corcoran who I met through doing the benefit, who has since become a great friend. Then there was an older punk who helped us the night of and a younger punk who made some ice cream. It was a melding of people from different stages in my life helping out on this one project.

The benefit, which took place at St. Steven's church, went awesomely. The food was delicious, we made a nice chunk of change for Coldsnap Legal. The cello player even came through! What felt most touching was seeing all the people who showed up. So many friends who I met during my time in DC attended. Never did I feel more connected with them than when I saw them all in the same room, simply enjoying each other's company.

I moved from DC to San Francisco a month later. The city simply had nothing for me anymore. I don't think I could have asked for a better goodbye to DC than that night. I also got to do a final feature at TerPoets, the College Park open mic that was so important for me as a writer, and that was my goodbye to the University of Maryland. That stage of my life got some pretty solid fucking bookends.

And that's what I remember, now that some time has passed. The alienation and depression are afterthoughts. The lost friendships are dead and buried. The pain passes but the happiness lingers.

Life is defined by its struggles. Moments of happiness are by nature fleeting reprieves from the troubles of the day, and the best a human being can hope for are extended periods of contentment. Still, ultimately, we are our memories. Hurt fades. Love survives. I love my friends from DC. I love the moments we shared. Those moments survive. They live.